


Loss in the Kitchen and Victory on the Battlefield

by WinglessCrows



Series: Through the Eyes of a Cook [18]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Cooking, Nakamaship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 08:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13244256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinglessCrows/pseuds/WinglessCrows
Summary: Sanji makes a mistake in the kitchen and the person who ends up cheering him up is, werdly enough, Zoro.or.Sanji and Zoro have a complicated friendship.





	Loss in the Kitchen and Victory on the Battlefield

As a cook it was Sanji's duty to come up with new interesting dishes every once in a while. This time he was working on a new dessert which was half inspired something he had tasted in the previous town they had visited and half something he had thought was a good idea. So Sanji had been working non-stop from morning all the way to noon and he now had his finished work.

The dessert was mainly made of a fluffy berry mousse, it had a bottom layer of dark chocolate and the in the middle was a small ball of milk chocolate which would spill out melted chocolate the instant it was broken. The whole thing was then covered in a smooth, transparent glaze that would give a bit of crunch and sweetness to the sour of the berries. The combination of the flavours chosen had been in perfect harmony in accordance to sweetness and sourness, and the dessert itself looked nothing but stunning. So Sanji looked at his finished work and after a while just sighed:

"I fucked up."

He wasn't certain where it had all gone wrong, but this dish had been good in theory and also doable in theory, hell this wasn't even that complicated of a dessert compared to other things he had done and was also quite good at. But this dish was far from prefect. The bottom chocolate layer was just a tad too bitter and it ruined the overall harmony. The mousse had come out too thick and heavy for reasons Sanji couldn't quite comprehend, because it was just a mousse and he had done it plenty of times before. Sanji was sure he could create the perfect mousse in his sleep and with one hand tied to his back. The chocolate in the middle had a weird consistency and before long, the melted chocolate on the inside would begin to melt its shell away, which would then ruin the mousse, if not consumed at the very instant that it happened. The glaze which looked really nice, tasted slightly burnt even though it both looked and smelled perfectly fine and had never once been above a temperature where would actually start to burn. Besides, caramel turned brown when it burned, and this was still transparent. So Sanji was at a completely loss for words, because this dish should have been rather simple with the only hard task being how to put it all together at perfect temperatures, which Sanji had half succeeded and half failed at doing, but even then it should not have caused results as bad as these.

Sanji was now just sitting on a chair looking at a plate of a failed dessert and that was when Zoro walked into the kitchen, probably to ask for booze... or just take it, depending on his mood. Of course, Sanji was too absorbed in thinking about his failed dish to deny Zoro any alcohol even if he might have under normal circumstances, because it was still noon and that was too early for drinking. 

Sanji then whipped out a notebook and started writing down what his process had been down to the last detail and how the dish had turned out. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Zoro had seated himself opposite of him, drinking from new opened bottle, but he decided to ignore him for now. Sanji was a hell of lot more passionate about cooking than he was about getting in a fight with Zoro. Of course, his focused work on trying to figure out what he had done wrong made him miss that Zoro had very sneakily taken the plate of failed dessert and tasted it.

"Wow, what went wrong here?" Zoro said teasingly and Sanji knew that he was expecting some sort of annoyed comeback or possibly a kick to the face, but Sanji just looked at him and then sank down on the table, with his hair covering his face and sighed:

"I don't know..."

Clearly this was not the answer Zoro had expected because first he was speechless and then he leaned a little bit closer to whisper:

"Are you okay?" And damn if that wasn't the nicest thing Zoro had ever said to him... too bad that he was too depressed to comprehend how weird this situation was.

"I fucked up the dessert." Sanji just said, defeated.

"Well, I can understand that much but surely that's not the end of the world."

"You don't understand~" Sanji said as he lifted himself from the table and he realized just how spoiled he sounded, "You never make mistakes, you're always so goddamn perfect and amazing at what you do and Luffy always says that you are oh-so-strong. But me, I get praised for my cooking and now I fucked that up. What would you do if you lost a battle?" Zoro was about to say something, but Sanji cut him off, "And don't even think of saying shit like 'I promised I would never lose until I defeated Mihawk'. We both know that that is a shit promise and chances are that you can't keep that promise," Sanji had not meant for the conversation to turn in that direction, but to be fair, he had always wanted to call Zoro out on that. What kind of person promises someone that they'll never lose, knowing that there are people so much stronger than you in the world. When Zoro had made that promise, he had been miles from where he was today, and still, some of his battles were only just won. What would have happened if they had run into those guys, when Zoro had been just a tad weaker?

"I guess that's the difference between us," Zoro said and took a swig of his drink, "You always know when you've met your match and that's where you draw the line. I cross the line you stop at."

Sanji would have argued against that, but this was what he admired about Zoro. Despite being stupid and having nothing but sheer strength to rely on, he always came through. He always found a way to grasp victory, even if it meant using a power he had yet to obtain and perfect. Zoro was everything Sanji hated: ill-mannered, disrespectful (especially towards women), cocky, and so much more that just pissed Sanji off to no end. Yet at the same time, Zoro was everything Sanji admired: strong willed, loyal, reliable, and somehow he was able to achieve the impossible. And that was probably what separated Zoro from the rest of them, and why he was Luffy's right hand man, because he too dreamed of the impossible, and Sanji believed that he would achieve the impossible.

"I guess you're right... even if you have a brain of moss," Sanji smirked and Zoro threw the now empty bottle after him.

"I'll eat your stupid dessert," Zoro then said and took the plate once again.

"Huh?" Sanji got confused.

"If I eat it, it can't count as a failure right?" Zoro said and ate the rest of the dessert. Sanji didn't protest, he just watched as Zoro finished the dessert, thanked him for the meal and left the kitchen. A smile found it's way to Sanji's lips. Who would have known that him making a mistake in the kitchen, would lead to this?

The next person Sanji fought was much stronger than him, but Sanji won the fight with skill, grace and a piece of good advice from a stupid swordsman.


End file.
